Category: abbrigate*

I always imagined that one day when I got pregnant I would go crazy knitting, embroidering and sewing things for the baby. When that day came, though, nothing like that happened, quite the contrary: I was so scared of possibly “jinxing it” – at the same time hoping that everything would be fine – that I made nothing for my babies (I was pregnant with twins). Nothing.

Except for this: abbrigate* embroidered baby blankets, one for each of them. My Prince and I wrote a few verses dedicated to each of our babies and I proceeded to embroider them on matching fabrics, in order to make matching blankets. I had made baby blankets for friends, friends of friends, I had made them for so many babies I could not not make one for my own babies.

And so I did.

Her blanket has gotten a lot of love and I never miss a chance to use it. Somedays it works as a bed cover, somedays it comes along on our strolls and covers her, serves as picnic blanket, you name it. Each stitch of each word has in its fibers all the wishes a mother has for her beloved daughter: to live a long, happy, healthy life.

Last Sunday I caught this little hand resting near the embroidered verses. The hand’s – and blanket’s – owner slept her much deserved beauty sleep, after walking what felt like a marathon (and falling down a couple of times, oh the perils of learning to walk!). As I was taking this picture, I thanked the Universe for having her in my life, and I kindly asked the Universe to take care of her brother for me. He never had the chance to use his blanket.

2014 has been a year full of challenges. It has also been a year full of joy: many friends have welcomed their babies, and new babies are always a reason to celebrate.

This blanket was a commission from a dear friend, who requested a specific poem by Sophia de Mello Breyner. They didn’t want to find out the baby’s gender in advance, so we went for a gender neutral fabric combination. I loved working on this blanket and how it turned out. And this time around I had a little model with me to photograph it before sending it off to its new home in Switzerland.

Once upon a time, back when I lived in Argentina and met my knitting group, a friend and I partnered to create abbrigate*. It was a lot of fun to bring to life the idea of making a business out of a passion, name it, create a brand and its personality. I remember fondly how much fun we had mixing sight, smell and taste when we were coming up with names for our chosen colors (rain!, raspberry!, cotton candy!).

With our transfer to Panama, in May of 2010, and running abbrigate* on my own, context changed dramatically: from a four season country, where knitted garments were a necessity in winter, to a two season, tropical country, where the weather was either warm or warmer, the only thing that was cold, or colder, in Panama was air conditioning. That’s where I saw a need: to protect babies with blankets, embroidered with love messages.

abbrigate* took off, and soon I was embroidering baby blankets for the many babies born during our time there. I loved combining local kuna patterned fabrics with solids, plus the very portuguese love messages reminiscent of the northern Portugal tradition of embroidered “lovers’ handkerchiefs”.

In 2013, time came to move again, to Lisbon, our hometown. Many changes ensued: I found a fantastic studio space in a beautiful Lisbon neighborhood, I restructured and streamlined my design and illustration services (and launched the Embroidery Club!) and today I am ready to share with you that abbrigate* has moved from its previous blogger-hosted home to my virtual home at air design and illustration studio. There’s still a lot of tweaking in the works (plus an online store in the near future!), and your suggestions are all welcome.

Lia’s embroidered blanket was a commission from a friend and long time customer of abbrigate*. (Thank you, J.!)

It is made of a beautiful african fabric I bought back when I went to Cape Verde, in March 2013, a solid cotton from Panama and flannel batting. This was the first time I worked with african patterns, and I loved the experience.

The message to baby Lia was embroidered on the solid face, leaving the busier one with some “secret”, tactile messages to be discovered with its use.

This post is part of Tara Mohr’s Grandmother Power action.It is a very personal post about how my maternal grandmother impacted my life in ways I never anticipated. If you feel inspired to do so, share your own Grandmother Power story in your blog. Press the button below to learn more.

My maternal grandmother taught me to knit. This may seem trivial information, but it isn’t. Let me tell you why this impacted my life in more ways that I expected.

I was very young, maybe seven. I attended primary school in the afternoon, and spent my mornings at home. At that time, my grandmother was widowed, and sometimes came to spend a few weeks with us. She was the kind of person who could not be still, even when she was. She crocheted, knitted and I’m sure if I were to be meeting her today I would learn a lot of other things about her.

I can’t recall if I asked her to teach me how to knit; maybe she just wanted to occupy a seven year old who liked to run and play outdoors. One day she taught me the basic purl stitch, the very first step for those of us who knit with the yarn around the neck. I remember a pink scarf, full of holes and uneven rows.

The seed was there. My grandmother went on knitting for her grandchildren – eleven of us – until she died, at age 93, the same day my first niece celebrated her first birthday. It was a bittersweet day. Two years later, I moved from my home in Lisbon, Portugal to my new hometown of Buenos Aires, Argentina. After one week, I fell ill and spent more than two weeks in the hospital, in a country where I knew no one. Looking back, it’s no surprise that I fell into a depression after coming home. After the natural high of finally leaving the hospital, along came the massive low Janine Shepherd mentions on her great TED talk.

It took me six months to get back to work and another four months until I decided to restart to knit, after a hiatus of 25 years, no less. Knitting became my passport to integration in my new hometown: through this craft and the beginning of Ravelry, the virtual knitting and crocheting community, I met many wonderful friends, with many different backgrounds. Our differences were greater than our similarities, but knitting bonded us together.

abbrigate*, my business of handmade items for babies (and grown-ups too), was borne out of the love for knitting. My crafting skills have improved so dramatically that I ventured out of the strict sense of knitting and purling and embraced new techniques. These skills have over flown into my illustration work, too, where I search for the tactile nature of fabric and include it in my pieces.

My seven year old me could not have known the impact of the lesson my grandmother taught me: that tradition is a common ground where everything else is different; that community, like a sweater, is built stitch by stitch, step by step, by sitting together and sharing thoughts; that growth can be hidden in the smallest details of our lives.

When I knit, I think of my grandmother, who was sweet, always had a nice word to say, a piece of popia (a cinnamon and lemon biscuit from Alentejo) to feed our mid-afternoon appetites and often gave me a thousand escudos “for ice cream”, as she used to say. With that money, at that time, I could buy at least five ice creams.

This blanket was a very special commission, as a group of friends came together to celebrate the arrival of a new baby and surprise her expecting parents. The text was embroidered in three different languages, reflecting their international backgrounds and life abroad. It was so much fun to be a part of this project and to create this blanket with the wonderful briefing put together by my dear clients. Thank you, dears F. and M.!It is made of cotton fabric embroidered with cotton floss, with cotton flannel as batting. *Esta manta foi uma encomenda especial para celebrar a chegada de um bebé muito internacional. O texto, bordado a fio de algodão, está em três línguas diferentes e reflecte os patrimónios dos pais, que foram surpreendidos pela prenda. Obrigada às queridas F. e M., cujo fantástico briefing deixou espaço para o meu trabalho. *To order a baby blanket for you,send us an e-mailorsee which ones are currently available.Para encomendar uma manta,mande-nos um mailou vejaas mantas actualmente disponíveis.* More photos here. Mais fotografias aqui.

These last few days I’ve been embroidering a lot. I find immense pleasure in it, the detail of those small stitches, the possibility of being terribly perfectionist (which I am) and that not being a problem. The beauty of not having to be a perfectionist and the result still being visually pleasant.

The photos above show two of the three blankets I made these last few days for abbrigate*. Each of them is a labor of love, dedicated to the sweet beginnings in people’s lives.

Unrelated, or maybe not: there is an upcoming trip to Orlando and San Francisco. Any tips? Fabric, yarn and art supplies stores you recommend?

Hi everyone! As you can see, needles are unstoppable here in the studio and there are always new products coming up.

I just wanted to share a link with you: sometime ago, I was asked to contribute with an article to the blog “On the Side Project”. Here, entrepreneurs share the stories of how they started their side projects and how their ideas progressed with time and effort.